The son of the political journalist of the same name, Blair grew up in Washington, D.C., graduated from Princeton in 1841, and attended law school at Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky. By 1842 he was practicing law with his brother Montgomery in St. Louis.

During the Mexican War, Blair served briefly as attorney general of the conquered New Mexico Territory. He then returned to his St. Louis law practice but shortly thereafter established the Barnburner, the official newspaper of the Free-Soil Party in Missouri. Although a slaveowner himself, Blair opposed the extension of slavery into the territories on economic as well as moral grounds. He advocated gradual emancipation, followed by deportation and colonization of the freed blacks.

Although he was a controversial figure in Missouri because of his prominent role in organizing the state’s Free-Soil Party, Blair was twice elected to terms in the Missouri legislature. In 1856 he won a seat in Congress, the only Free-Soiler from a slave state to do so. He lost his campaign for reelection in 1858 but returned to Congress as a Republican in 1860.

An outstanding stump speaker, Blair vigorously campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential contest while organizing the Republican Party in Missouri. In the House, he served as chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, while in Missouri he mobilized a secret pro-Union militia unit called the Wide Awakes. It was largely owing to Blair that the secession sympathizers in Missouri were held in check and that the state did not join the Confederacy.

In 1862 Blair recruited seven regiments in Missouri and accepted appointment as a brigadier general. He was promoted to major general after proving his ability as a commander at Vicksburg and other battlefronts. His final military activity of the Civil War was in command of troops marching through Georgia with General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Back in Congress in 1864, Blair boldly criticized the Radical Republicans and supported Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction. He opposed giving blacks the vote, disfranchising Southern whites, and imposing military governments on the states of the defeated Confederacy. He tried but failed to win back control of the Republican Party in Missouri from Radical control. By 1865 he had switched to the Democratic Party, and in 1868 he was the Democratic candidate for vice president.

Following Ulysses S. Grant’s victory in that election, Blair sought to align Missouri Democrats with the Liberal Republicans. This coalition eventually ousted the Radicals from control of the state government. Meanwhile, Blair won a seat in the state legislature and, in 1870, was chosen to fill an unexpired term in the U.S. Senate. When in 1872 he ran for a full term in the Senate, however, he was defeated. Shortly after that loss, he was stricken with paralysis and never again held major public office.